Above: The Star Thread Mill Factory Ruins - Former wheelhouse wing of factory. This room originally cradled the large water wheel that powered the thread mill and wove the cotton into spools before the hydro-electric Barnett Shoals Dam of 1911.
From the roots grow seeds whose numbers are legion. The story of humanity's history is planted deep along this spot of expansive Oconee riverlands. The epitome of the Piedmont Georgia Region, The Shoals of Barnett, germinated out of ancient history and will continue to sprout, seed, and regrow even beyond the days of our very own deaths. We, as people, can still be remembered, through our collected knowledge and traditions.
Historic Barnett Shoals, GA is that Place Through Time.
A Brief History of Man
beyond our collected memory:
Over 10,000 years ago the granite rapids that would become known as Barnett Shoals attracted some of the oldest inhabitants found in the southeast. The first peoples utilized the Oconee River and its surrounding natural resources. Countless human migrations across forgotten eons encountered the abundance of the area's woods and waters. In 8,000 B.C. one of the first villages of the Peoples of the Oconee, semi-permanently settled, just below the shoals. The archeological site still exists, and an excavation was conducted by Pennsylvania State in the early 1990s. This village wasn't the last. Flaked quartz, chert, and flint were formed into projectile points, knives, and scrapers. After a hard rain the artifacts are often found protruding from this ancient earth like teeth from long forgotten beasts.
From these waters rose a sophisticated native culture mixed from meso-american mound building people. Here, along the flood plains of the Georgian Piedmont, they made ceremonial centers of raised earthen-mound communities. Complex geometric designs, as well as, religious and astronomical motifs are still found on the broken shards of pottery that lay along the sandbars and creek beds of the former shoals. The ancient Native American mounds of Scull Shoals are located nine miles down river in the Oconee River National Forest. You can launch a boat from our below dam landing and go find them today...
rebellions & revolutions:
The peoples identified as part of the Creek Indians later inhabited these lands for a time, seceding lands to first the Cherokees from the north, and later waves of Europeans and Africans from across the Atlantic Ocean. Explorers, colonists, settlers, freemen, and slaves travelled into this area. Until 1805, the Oconee River served as the United States national boundary waters between the tribes and peoples associated with the Creek Indian Nation. The young American nation established a chain of forts along the eastern bank of the Oconee River. A blockhouse fort site was located at the base of the shoals guarding an ancient river ford crossing. Fort Matthews is now believed to be found just south of Barnett Shoals and north of the mouth of Shoal Creek. That 2-3 year bastion of boundary outpost was believed to have quartered a minimal armed infantry and dragoon presence upon the peoples of the Creek Nation, though infamous tales of retribution and raiding parties persist to this day.
After Georgia became a state and America a country, Revolutionary War Veteran John Barnett came to control great portions of these shoals and hills. It is apparent by the placement of his family's graveyard that he and his loved ones treasured this land. They later became permanently rooted...buried here...mixing their atoms into the soil, on a quiet hillside overlooking the Oconee River.
eternal white sun:
In 1887, some of the latest arrivals realized the conjunction of opportunity and natural resources and formed a town around a stone hewn mill that produced "heavenly" star-thread. A wing dam and canal raceway originally channelled Oconee waters from the highest falls of the shoals into the giant wheel of the factory, twirling strands of local cotton fiber onto thousands of thread spindles daily.
In 1911, James White built his largest and most powerful hydro electric power plant. This provided electricity not only to the factory and surrounding mill town of Barnett Shoals but also to the City of Athens, GA and its local street cars.
The night sky around Barnett Shoals, GA became a candle upon a hill. An entire community consisting of over 50 homesites, a methodist church, a local grade school, a general store and post office, a blacksmith, sawmill, and company management and payroll office thrived in this one area. Under Mr. White's direction, and later his family's supervision, the mill town flourished and realized the height of success throughout the 1920s. A talented baseball team, a local marching band, and a fraternal order of Odd Fellows helped provide ongoing communal activities. Soon, an entire village of workers, families, teachers, preachers, hydro-electirc engineers, farmers, and fellow countrymen soon grew up from these grounds. The factory was named the Star Thread Mill. As we now acknowledge, the town became known as Barnett Shoals, Georgia.